


i have fallen in love (with the fear of falling)

by junko (orphan_account)



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Dark, F/F, F/M, Female Steve Rogers, Gen, POV Second Person, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 16:05:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2275995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/junko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>or, <i>sometimes i think you like getting punched!</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	i have fallen in love (with the fear of falling)

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote a pretentious 2nd pers pov fic im officially a writer
> 
> EDIT: I HECKED UP THE TITLE I FIXE IT NOW

i.

When you’re five, you balance on top of flower pots and public benches to race across them and jump off the edge.

 _You’ll fall off, sweetheart, be careful,_ says your mother, but you can’t help but wonder if when you do, whether it will have been worth it.

Not in so many words, of course; you weren’t a very talkative kid.

(For the record, it is. Worth it, you mean.)

ii.

You develop a love for heights, for climbing, for fire escapes and tree branches. It’s a good thing you’re skinny, that you can wriggle out windows and balance on the roof.

It’s the one place in the world you feel tall. You relish the feeling. Your mother calls you in for supper, and you have to put your feet back on the ground, eventually.

You don’t tell her how you slipped on the way down, sliding down shingle and grasping the edge with a tiny hand, pulling yourself up with spindly arms. You laugh as you scramble up, scuffing your mary-jane shoes, and you spread your arms wide and whoop when you can stand.

 _Take that, bullies,_ you think, _who’s weak now?_ There is wind in your hair and you have bested gravity.

Looking back, you think that you might be ten. Maybe eleven. Does it matter?

iii.

When you’re fourteen and clutching your chest in an alley and feeling your lungs seize up, you feel yourself disconnect for a while.

You’re heading up, somewhere, and you look down and can see yourself, and _huh_. Does this count?

You wake up in bed, and find out you’ve been given your last rites;

Again.

The preacher is quite cross with you. It’s no wonder. You’ve essentially just flipped off God. There’s a certain thrill to it, when people think you’re such a good catholic girl.

Later, your best friend asks if he can light a smoke on your fire escape, and you wave a hand and say go ahead. You feel like the tightening in your chest is a victory, somehow.

Yeah, that’s logic screwed even to your messed up brain. But you’re alive and in bed when you could be a million miles in the air, and you’re not sure how you feel about that yet.

iv.

You find your fairy with turquoise hair to turn you into a real live girl at twenty-four years old-ish, and you come out of it about a foot taller, and for once you tower over everyone with both feet planted firmly in the ground.

It’s dissonant, and you feel screaming in the back of your teeth.

Maybe it’s the echo of the people you’ve killed.

Maybe it’s the ghost of his tongue in your mouth?

There isn’t really a difference, is your point. You leap out of a plane for him, and it’s like falling off a roof but even better, because you get to land on the ground, this time.

 _Let’s do that again,_ you think as you leap through flames, and going to war was the best idea _ever!_

Make no mistake, you’re still the good guy here! You’re not a bully. You’ve just killed, oh, a hundred people, give or take.

You never did pay attention in Sunday school.

v.

Watching someone else fall is, surprisingly, not nearly as exhilarating as you expected. You’re breathless all the same, though, so maybe that counts for something.

 _you’ll hurt yourself,_ your mother says to your child-self, and you rip a man’s heart out of his chest.

You should have seen this coming, really. You were on such a high that it _had_ to be a metaphor of some sorts. The only question is if you were the Icarus or the Sisyphus in this situation.

(The answer, naturally, is a little bit of both.)

So when it’s your turn to fall this time, you think of a little girl in mary-janes on a rooftop, and you put your boots up on the plane’s dashboard and put your hands behind your head to watch the ice get closer.

You laugh as you crash. There is ice crusting your eyelashes shut, and you have bested gravity.

Or is it the other way around?

You feel like you’ve come out the winner of this battle, somehow, anyway.

{ + vi. }

You rise up like a demon, perhaps, and claw through the ice to find that you’d rather stick to falling, thanks.

You live off the meager up-down rise of adrenaline waves, until she comes to you with red hair and a knife-point smile and ask you how you feel about flying.

She reminds you of screaming ghosts on your tongue and the inside of your cheek, and you were never good at flying, but you were always pretty good at the other thing.

You’re in your war paint again, and you’re grinning as you approach target. The hangar doors open, and she smirks at you. _Too shy?_ she asks, and you’re not _really_ lying when you say back, _Too busy_.

As if you ever had time in your heart for anything other than this, sailing through the air, knowing there’s a countdown until impact.

You crash through the waves, and it’s like wind in your hair and an arm slung around your skinny shoulders, a cigarette passed around a campfire, a session on the training mats that ends in broken bones.

You grin, open-mouthed, and bubbles escape your mouth as you kick towards the surface.

 _girlie,_ your mother tuts, _you wouldn’t know falling in love if it punched you in the face._

 _i’m starting to think you like getting punched,_ his voice echoes soon after.

You climb on-board and kill a man with your bare hands. There’s work to do, before you can get back in the air again.

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on my rp account, captstella


End file.
